‘The Office’ Superfan episodes were my throwback stream of the week
‘The Office’ Superfan episodes were my throwback stream of the week
I fell back on an old favorite in a new configuration with ‘The Office’ this week, and it didn’t disappoint.
As happens to me fairly frequently, I decided there wasn’t anything so exciting premiering on streaming services over the course of this week that I needed to watch its series or season premiere immediately. I was pretty busy with errands and other tasks this week, particularly, and when the evenings arrived, I didn’t have the mental capacity to dive into anything new.
That’s why I turned to “The Office,” but a new configuration of the time-tested comedy series. Peacock offers the standard “Office” episodes the way you remember them from their original run on NBC, but it also offers what it calls “Superfan” episodes, which incorporate deleted scenes for an extended runtime. Streaming “The Office” Superfan episodes was like meeting a new friend all over again, and it was my favorite stream of the week.
“The Office” Superfan episodes are easy to find via search in the Peacock library, if you don’t see them advertised anywhere on your home screen. Peacock has been releasing Superfan episodes season by season, but by now the first eight seasons — including all seven seasons with Steve Carell’s Michael Scott — are available on demand.
From a zoomed-out view, the show is still the same, even with all the extra scenes added back in. At its heart, it’s still the same mockumentary comedy about the lives of employees at the Scranton branch of Dunder Mifflin, a mid-sized regional paper company that is adapting to an increasingly digital world that modern viewers will now think of as a time long past.
To be sure, I find that familiarity a comfort, not a drawback. I’ve watched “The Office” plenty of times before, but watching Superfan episodes is a new experience in its own right — and the closer you watch, the more you notice. At the least, the deleted scenes chosen for inclusion in Superfan episodes can add more context to a joke that made the original cut, or give a new flavor to a character. For example, I was pretty surprised at how much more sardonic and less passive the Phyllis character can be when deleted scenes are added back to the show.
On occasion, these scenes can totally change my perception of an episode. One example is the episode “Boys and Girls,” in which Michael feels threatened by Jan’s attempts to stir ambition in the office’s female employees. He then leads the men of the office down to the warehouse in an attempt to bond with the employees there, an attempt that quickly and predictably goes awry.
There’s a re-inserted scene in this episode that changes broad portions of the show, in my eyes. A key storyline of the episode is Jim encouraging his not-yet-partner Pam to follow her artistic dreams, while her fiancé Roy discourages her. A deleted scene shows an angry Roy confronting Jim about his encouragement of Pam’s hope to join a design training program, despite his earlier assurances that he’s not bothered by rumors that Jim formerly had a crush on her.
I think this totally changes the character of the episode, and gives what I believe is a large amount of context to Roy’s extreme anger in later seasons when he finds out that Jim and Pam kiss. By and large, scenes like this one which I believe alter how I perceive the whole show are rare, but they are part of what makes “The Office” Superfan episodes so compelling to fans of the show who have never seen them.
Another cool aspect of “The Office” Superfan episodes is that they occasionally come with brand-new cold opens. “The Office” was famous for trying a lot of different jokes for some scenes, and these cold opens are such tone-setters for their episodes. It’s really neat to see the paths not trodden by the show in its original run, and to go back and forth on which openings were better in the first run versus which are better on Superfan episodes.
If you’re a fan of “The Office,” but you haven’t checked out Superfan episodes on Peacock yet, I think they’re a must-watch. It’s both an old favorite and a new experience all wrapped up into one, and it can offer new ways of thinking about characters and storylines that have become classics of television.
Peacock
Peacock is a subscription video streaming service from NBCUniversal that includes original shows, blockbuster movies, and classic television series. Peacock is home to “Yellowstone,” “The Office,” and original hits like “Poker Face” and “Bel-Air.” You can also watch live sports and NBC programming, including the NFL, MLB, WWE, the Olympics, the Premier League, NASCAR, the French Open, college football and basketball, and the PGA Tour. Premium Plus subscribers can stream their local NBC feed in all 210 markets.